There are many work environments that require portable access to tools, instruments, equipment and supplies as well as electronic systems. A particularly demanding environment in which instruments and supplies are regularly moved from place to place throughout the workday, is the hospital environment. Nurses and other health-care workers must move medical supplies from room to room as they treat different patients. In some cases the patients themselves require storage for personal belongings, and for patient-specific supplies, such as specialized wound dressings. In addition, patients may require portable access to medical instruments such as IV pumps, heart monitors and the like.
According to conventional practice, each distinct storage or instrumentation need is dealt with separately, resulting in the multiple storage containers or cabinets that must be independently pushed or carried from room to room. In the example of a nursing professional, the nurse must load supplies into a toolkit or similar carrier. Since the total of supplies for a shift may exceed a weight that can easily be carried, the nurse must return to a central location to obtain additional supplies throughout the shift. The additional trips are wasteful of worker time. The problem of excessive supplies is compounded by the requirement for safe storage of used needles, catheters, and the like, generally referred to as sharps. OSHA regulations and good practice require that these sharps be stored in a locked container. Existing solutions have failed to recognize these needs with a comprehensive solution.
Prior art portable cabinets are not easily adaptable to differing storage requirements. For example, the requirements for storage by a shift nurse who serves a relatively small number of patients all on a single floor in the hospital are markedly different from those of the nurse whose primary task is to take blood samples from the patients throughout the hospital. Still other considerations apply to patient-specific storage. A patient may require a wheeled stand which is normally at the bedside in the hospital room. The stand may incorporate an IV pole for elevating bags of intravenous fluids above an IV pump carried on the stand. When it is necessary to transport that patient, for example for x-ray imaging, it is necessary to wheel the patient bed or gurney and stand together to another location in the hospital. Conventional IV stands have no provision for powering the medical instrumentation required by the patient as the stand and bed are wheeled from the patient room to the hospital x-ray department. Although most medical instrumentation incorporates backup batteries, it is very common for those batteries to become discharged while the patient is in transport or while awaiting a medical procedure such as x-ray imaging. An ideal stand for these circumstances would incorporate castoring wheels, provision for bed mounting and an uninterruptable power supply (UPS).
Against the divergent requirements of various needs for storage, locked storage, wheeled transport and future adaptability, the hospital administrator must weigh the cost of custom-designed cabinetry and the associated cost of having to carry a large inventory of different portable cabinets and storage of the cabinetry and stands of the off-duty health-care worker. Storage room space is in short supply in hospitals, which typically already contain a number of wheeled stands such as IV stands.
The examples of the hospital environment are also instructive as to the difficulties of portable cabinets used in other work environments, such as manufacturing, inspection and auto repair.
It is therefore desirable to have a portable stand and cabinet with modular components that may be adapted to multiple storage and transport requirements and where one or more of the drawers or other storage openings in the cabinet may be locked to limit access to the contents to only authorized persons. Such a modular cabinet is particularly desirable where it can be adapted to existing wheeled stands, and where a locking mechanism is provided that not only prevents access to specific drawers, but also prevents disassembly of the modular cabinetry from the stand except for those persons who have the key or combination to a cabinet lock.
In an exemplary embodiment of the invention the deficiencies of prior art transportable cabinets are resolved by providing a portable stand which is preferably wheeled and which incorporates a vertical support adapted to carry multiple modular cabinets, together with a push handle. The portable stand may also provide an elevated mounting for electronic instruments and other electrically powered apparatus, such as portable computers. When used in the exemplary medical environment, the electronic instruments may include IV pumps, heart monitors, respiration therapy machines and virtually any other medical instrument that must be transported from room to room and from patient to patient. The stand may incorporate a vertical pole extending outwardly from the push handle to support medical supplies including bags of intravenous fluids.
A stand mounting interface is provided which may be utilized to mount from the vertical supports of existing stands. For example, for stands with a vertical support that has a circular cross-section, each interface will have a part circular surface for engagement with the vertical support. Preferably the interface is provided in two parts which may be clamped or otherwise fastened together to firmly grip the central pole of the stand and provide a firm mount for cabinets and other supported modular structures. Mounting channels are secured to the interface plate and are spaced from the interface plate a sufficient distance to allow an internal slider to reciprocate vertically within the mounting channel and to interfit with a face plate.
The mounting channel performs multiple functions which are accommodated by spaced openings along the vertical extent of the mounting channel. These openings allow for a cam operator to penetrate the mounting channel and engage the slider to reciprocate the slider against the action of compression springs. The cabinet module is supported by mounting hooks that are received in openings in the mounting channel. The mounting channel also incorporates locking rod openings to receive locking rods mounted on the rear face of selected drawers in cabinet modules. The locking rods have an enlarged end which is received through the enlarged end of a keyhole-shaped opening in the slider. When the slider is moved to one extreme position, the narrowed end of the keyhole-shaped opening slides over the locking rod and thereby prevents the enlarged end of the locking rod from being withdrawn from the mounting channel. Selected drawers have a cam operator secured at the rear edge of the drawer. The camming surface of the operator presses against the slider to reciprocate the slider to the extreme of its travel where the locking rod""s are captured by their enlarged ends. Unless all of the drawers with cam operators in place are open, the locking slider is not free to move under the bias of the compression springs to move the enlarged portion of the keyhole into registration with the enlarged ends of the locking rods. Therefore the cabinet in which such drawers are located cannot be opened or removed from the mounting channel. In this way, a lock on a selected drawer can prevent all of the drawers and modules on one side of the stand from being removed. Only when all of the drawers with a locking rod (typically only the top-most drawer has a lock and lock rod) are partially opened is it possible to remove the modules. This comes about because the locking rod openings in the mounting channel are not sufficiently larger than the locking rod. Therefore the cabinet module cannot be lifted a sufficient distance to cause the support hooks to clear the mounting openings in the channel unless the drawer is withdrawn a sufficient distance for the locking rod to completely clear the mounting channel. The drawer cannot be opened if the drawer is locked. In this manner, a single lock on a single drawer can prevent the opening of any other drawer on that side of the stand which has a locking rod and can prevent the removal of any of the cabinet modules on that side of the stand.
Although the a cabinet modules have been described in connection with modules that incorporate drawers, the modules may have virtually any other kind of front closure as well. One of the facilities of the invention is particularly apparent where the lower-most cabinet is provided with a closure which is attached by fasteners. The enclosed volume thereby formed by the cabinet sides, top, bottom, and the removable closure, provide an ideal electronics enclosure for an uninterruptable power supply (UPS). Water-resistant louvered vents may be provided to provide adequate cooling to the electronic components without exposing them to the risk of damage by spilled liquids. By locating the UPS module at the lower-most mounting position for modules, the UPS battery is located below the normal center of gravity of the stand, thereby further lowering the installed center of gravity, which makes it easy to push the stand without risk of upset. Sufficient battery power can be housed in a single module to power multiple medical instruments far longer than is conventionally provided by their on-board backup batteries. Although other voltages may be provided, it is particularly useful to provide AC line voltage (117 volts in the U.S.). This allows for providing a variety of instruments without special adoption simply by plugging them into the line output of the UPS. The line voltage output may desirably be routed out of the UPS module and inside the mounting channel in the space between the slider and interface plate. In this way, the AC output of the UPS can supply a multiple outlet electrical box at approximately the level of the push handle (waist level for the operator). This permits a single line cord to the UPS to supply multiple instruments with uninterruptable AC by plugging them into the multiple outlet electrical box, without requiring that the operator stoop to plug in multiple cords into multiple wall outlets. When desired, a module may provide DC power at predetermined voltages. Since different medical instruments have differing voltage requirements, the modularity of the system is of significant value in supporting many different electronic instruments from a single storage and transport platform.
There is therefore provided a new and improved portable stand mounting for modular cabinets that may be utilized to easily transport and store medical and other supplies and which may incorporate an uninterruptable power supply to expand the usable battery life of a variety of instruments. Since the cabinets are modular, the configuration of a stand may be customized to the particular requirements of the operator, including providing cabinets with open storage, drawers or closed modules housing electronic instruments such as the UPS. The invention makes it possible to extend the use of existing wheeled stands (such as IV stands) which reduces the capital cost and storage room space requirements of providing a portable cabinet.